Each Sunday, priests have offered the blessing, “Lord be with you.” The congregation would respond, “And also with you.” Now, however, the response will be, “And with your spirit, as your body is a disposable vessel of sin and corruption.”
Within the Nicene Creed, the phrase “one in Being with the Father” will become “consubstantial with the Father.” When a priest prays over the bread and wine used for the Holy Communion , he will ask God for blessings “by sending down your spirit upon them like the dewfall.” Vatican officials say the language is more accurate and should therefore help clear up ongoing concerns about the legitimacy of English translations in the Bible.
“For example,” one official explained, “a lot of people dispute that the New Testament makes any specific reference to homosexuality. The original Greek and Latin are unclear in translation. ‘Gay’ is not a word that would’ve been used for this. And homosexual can be taken to mean one person loving another of the same sex, just as pedophilia merely implies the love a child. And what wholesome person doesn’t love a child? Our committee has corrected this. So, all instances of deviant sex will now be clearly called out as ‘hateful homosexual devastations in the tenebrous pit of God’s posterior despair.’”
But priests complain that they can’t promote the new missal with integrity.
“It’s just absurd,” denounced Father Preternature, the priest of San Narciso County’s only Catholic Church. “Everything’s changed, and it makes no sense.”
In the new format, the overall structure of Mass remains the same, although the content has changed. During the introductory rites, when the priest leads the assembly in making the sign of the cross, the key elements of the passion of Jesus must symbolically be reenacted. Women from the audience now take the stage and anoint their husbands using blessed canola oil. After, a meal (doughnuts) is served to each family in attendance. One person in that family must betray the head of the family, who metaphorically assumes the role of Jesus. Deacons and servers approach and beat each Jesus in the assembly senseless while he struggles to make the sign of the cross.
The priest then says, “In the name of the Father -- who is your Lord God and the sire of Jesus Christ, but not to be confused with me, who is also called Father, or your biological male parent -- and the Son -- again referring to the son of God, who is Jesus Christ, even though we are all children of God, but not His physical offspring in that same sense, derived from the one chosen woman, Mary, who is not your mother, even though your mother may also be called Mary, but just that one wife of God, because this is not Mormonism -- and the Holy Spirit -- or One Eternal Triune God, which is quite confusing but really just connotes the combined essence of the Lord and his son Jesus Christ, manifest as one overarching personage of divinity that just really sums everything up here.”
The people answer, “Amen, Father, who is my spiritual mentor, but not the sire of Jesus Christ, my Lord, who is also the son of my Lord, God Almighty, who is my Super Father.”
During the liturgical greeting in the Eucharist Prayer, the priest’s exhortation to “Lift up your hearts” will be replaced by “Conjoin the quiddity of your abiding affection, consent and supplication to the progenitor of your being.” To which the audience replies, “Appropriate and fitting it is to render gratuities upon the forebear of cosmogony and architect of our physiology.”
Mass will conclude with the priest telling the assembly, “Leave, you are dismissed.”
Other changes affect the practice of baptism, in which priests will now bathe unchristened children in kisses, their lips purified by holy water. Vatican officials say the ritual eliminates concerns about drownings as babies will no longer be submerged in a basin filled with dangerous inches of sanctified water.
Funeral and wedding rites, too, will undergo transformation. The new missal calls funeral rites, “the fraternal offices of burial,” and wedding rites, “the matrimonial offices of burial.”
“How can I say those words?” asked Preternature. “It separates religion from real life. And our religion is all about real life. Noah’s Ark, angels, the blue-eyed and blond Jesus, Jonah and the whale, everything in Revelations, these are all tangible parts of everyday living. Consider the story of Onan, in which God strikes down a serial masturbator, Er, whose father then allows the dead man’s brother to have sex with his widow. Or Saul, who permitted David to marry his daughter in exchange for 100 foreskins. That is reality. And the Church seems to have lost touch with it.”
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